should I
not be grateful to one such as his Grace, who gives me his heart and his
great name? It is a great gift he honors me with; I know 'tis a bargain
between us; and I accept it, and will do my utmost to perform my part of
it. 'Tis no question of sighing and philandering between a noble man
of his Grace's age and a girl who hath little of that softness in her
nature. Why should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond; and if
it be no sin in a man to covet honor, why should a woman too not desire
it? Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been
down on your knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with
me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not
by sighs and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping and singing
hymns to me, I know very well I am no goddess, and grow weary of the
incense. So would you have been weary of the goddess too--when she was
called Mrs. Esmond, and got out of humor because she had not pin-money
enough, and was forced to go about in an old gown. Eh! cousin, a
goddess in a mob-cap, that has to make her husband's gruel, ceases to
be divine--I am sure of it. I should have been sulky and scolded; and of
all the proud wretches in the world Mr. Esmond is the proudest, let me
tell him that. You never fall into a passion; but you never forgive, I
think. Had you been a great man, you might have been good-humored; but
being nobody, sir, you are too great a man for me; and I'm afraid of
you, cousin--there! and I won't worship you, and you'll never be happy
except with a woman who will. Why, after I belonged to you, and after
one of my tantrums, you would have put the pillow over my head some
night, and smothered me, as the black man does the woman in the play
that you're so fond of. What's the creature's name?--Desdemona. You
would, you little black-dyed Othello!"

"I think I should, Beatrix," says the Colonel.

"And I want no such ending. I intend to live to be a hundred, and to
go to ten thousand routs and balls, and to play cards every night of my
life till the year eighteen hundred. And I like to be the first of my
company, sir; and I like flattery and compliments, and you give me none;
and I like to be made to laugh, sir, and who's to laugh at YOUR
dismal face, I should like to know? and I like a coach-and six or a
coach-and-eight; and I like diamonds, and a new gown every week; and
people to say--'That's the Duchess--How well her Gra